Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Chapter 113: Final Exam - <AUTHOR> http://hpmor.com/chapter/113 <comment><USER2> To explain the point to people who have no idea what's going on:

On the recently-posted chapter 113, the author of HPMOR has offered an extra chapter (121) if the fans are able to figure out how Harry doesn't die in the situation he has ended up in. We have 60 hours, ending at "12:01AM Pacific Time (8:01AM UTC) on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015".

The actual text of the rules has (in my opinion) spoilers, so I'm not posting them.

I don't really consider this comprehensible or even possible for anyone who hasn't read the preceding 112 chapters and isn't actively participating in the fan community's predictions already, but if this interests you, you may as well try speed-reading your way through it and coming up with a solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Massive spoilers. For the uninitiated: [http://hpmor.com/](http://hpmor.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> damn . I stopped around Ch73 a while ago. Damn.

</comment><comment><USER5> I suspect Harry is going to die. I can't think of any rational explanation that he can survive.</comment>


Why Does the US Patent Office Keep Approving Clearly Ridiculous Patents? - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150430/14481230841/why-does-us-patent-office-keep-approving-clearly-ridiculous-patents.shtml

<comment><USER2> "Republished" ?

More like ripped off and smothered with ads. Techdirt is miserable.</comment>


The Milky Way's black hole may spring to life in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/the-milky-ways-black-hole-may-spring-to-life-in-2013.ars <comment><USER2> Considering the lightyears involved, I assume this means we'll _see_ it in 2013?

<comment><USER3> Presumably, yes. It would be odd for the astronomers to use two different temporal points of reference; time of observation is the only time that matters. Plus, any excitement on the part of astronomers would be super pointless if they had to wait another 24824 years to observe it.

<comment><USER4> From the point of view of a photon originating in that gas cloud, it was emitted by an electron in the gas cloud and absorbed by an electron in the telescope sensor at the exact same instant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can somebody explain why the black hole at the center of our galaxy is called "Sgr A*"? Is there some system behind the name or are astronomers just like programmers in naming stuff (it took me a while to figure out how to pronounce nginx >:().

<comment><USER6> Sgr is short for Sagitarrius, a constellation. If you mark off the boundary of Sagitarrius, Sgr A* would be in that region. The black hole itself does not have the name, but rather the radio source associated with it. (conjecture alert)I'm not sure where the * comes from, but I believe the A is associated with the fact that Sgr A is a super nova remnant. Supernova are typically named "SN [year] [alpha]" where [year] is the year discovered and [alpha] is an alphabetical character in order of discovery. A supernova remant wouldnt have a year associated, so i'm guessing it's given a constellation and then alphabetical marking.

Typically, astronomers have a mix of common names and many systematic naming schemes, but they get obsoleted when better instruments find darker objects. There was once a catalog of nebula called Messier with about 130 objects (M1,M2,..). We still use these designations, but suddely they found thousands more of these objects and had to rename using the New General Catalog, (NGC1,NGC2,NGC496). Even further the IC goes into many thousands.

For constellations, stars in each constellation are usually named alphabetically with greek chars in terms of their apparent brightness. Alpha Centauri is the brightest star, for example, in Centarus. Then there are common names like Polaris, the north star, whch is alpha ursa minoris.

<comment><USER7> > _There was once a catalog of nebula called Messier_

Hah, I'd sort of known what the Messier catalog was, but you inspired me to look at its Wikipedia page[1]. Apparently Charles Messier was looking for comets, and was tired of getting distracted by things that weren't comets. M1 is _the Crab Nebula_ [2].

This amuses me.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_object> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Messier_objects>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Could someone explain the implications of all this in laymen terms? Are we in deep shit?

<comment><USER9> No. From what I understand, any material caught in the accretion disk is merely funnelling down into the black hole's event horizon, i.e. the centre. It will not affect any orbiting bodies, such as our solar system, but it will make the black hole pseudo-visible to astronomers because the material in the accretion disk will admit some light.

<comment><USER10> It will add mass to the black hole though, right? So that will affect orbits, no? Or is that just so infinitesimally small that it can reasonably be ignored?

<comment><USER11> The mass is already roughly there. One thing to bear in mind - if you replaced the Sun with a black hole of equal mass, planets wouldn't change orbits. It's the same gravity and centre of mass, just a different density/volume.

<comment><USER12> This is true for Newtonian gravity, but only approximately true for general relativity (or so I understand it).

<comment><USER13> This includes the effects of general relativity. As long as the mass is the same, the orbits of planets will remain the same.

<comment><USER12> According to wikipedia[1] the converse of the Shell Theorem is (nearly) true:

Suppose there is a force F between masses M and m, separated by a distance r of the form F = Mmf(r) such that any spherically symmetric body affects external bodies as if its mass were concentrated at its centre. Then what form can the function f take?

The form of f allows Newtonian gravity but not Einsteinian.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem#Converses_and_gen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem#Converses_and_generalisations)

<comment> T-hawk The key point there is "spherically symmetric". The Sun isn't. It bulges around its equator thanks to rotation, as does everything. That does have effects on planetary motion; an object in an inclined orbit spends a bit more time a bit farther away from a bit of the Sun's mass. Replace the Sun with a black hole of equal mass and you don't have that oblateness. The effect on planetary orbits would be very small, so macroscopically the Solar System would still be the same, just with very slight differences in orbital speeds and periods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if they took time dilation into account when calculating the arrival date.

</comment><comment><USER15> _That may be about to change, however. Astronomers have spotted a cloud of gas with a mass about three times that of Earth that's on a trajectory that will have it pass close to Sgr A_ in 2013*

If this is for real, I am ridiculously humbled by the power of modern astronomy. It's pretty damned amazing to me that we have the ability to detect the location, dimension, and trajectory of a mere 3 earth-masses of thin, amorphous gas 27k light years away, in the noisiest and densest part of the galaxy.

<comment><USER16> Based on the Nature article abstract images it appears they were able to image the cloud using the VLT telescope. I got confused about L'-band for a second. Thought they were talking about L-band.

Feel free to correct me if someone has read the article.

[1] [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10652.html)

[2] <http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/vlt.html>

[edited for mistake]

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is absolutely shockingly awesome. (No I don't use these words often at all.) Based on the non-mainstream scientific evidence, the coming radiation has the power to completely reconfigure our DNA, and in fact all DNA/RNA on Earth's surface. _This is_ what had been predicted by numerous ancient cultures including Mayans, and badly misinterpreted as the end of the world, or end of the times. If you don't happen to be a hardline mainstream scientist, I _really_ recommend picking up this book, if for nothing else, then for all the absolutely shocking scientific research it references: <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0525952047/></comment>


Should all kids learn Algebra? (Dr. Schank's Educational Outrage column) - <AUTHOR> http://www.engines4ed.org/schank/edoutragecolumns/edoutrage46.cfm

<comment><USER2> It's almost impressive that someone with such a lengthy resume can write such a bad article.</comment>


Inside Y Combinator's first hack-a-thon - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/08/04/inside-y-combinators-first-hack-thon/

<comment><USER2> looks fantastic. every time we run our hack4good events i'm amazed by both what gets done in 48 hours and what relationships get built that last a lifetime. hack climate change next with us here: [http://bit.ly/hack4good06](http://bit.ly/hack4good06)</comment>


Entrepreneurs Must Make Money Before Making Meaning - <AUTHOR> http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2008/01/bootstrapping.html#more

<comment><USER2> I always thought that Drucker said it best: "Profit is the cost of doing business."

Businesses exist for a purpose: to provide goods and/or services to customers. They don't exist _just_ to make money. You can make money in plenty of other ways and not have a business. (Think about a lottery winner or speculator.)

But if you want to keep doing business, you have to make money, and you have to make money over and above the cost of capital. Otherwise, you'll never be able to marshal the resources necessary to keep providing your goods and services.

<comment> daniel-cussen I'm not entirely sure playing the lottery and speculating are such good ways of making money. Someone who's in it solely for the money is probably going to start a business before doing either of these things.

<comment><AUTHOR> This opens up another topic that is equally interesting, which is the relationship between entrepreneurs and risk management.

My observation is that entrepreneurs are NOT risk takers. They are very much risk-averse. This is a strange comment but as an entrepreneur, I differentiate between taking risk and mitigating ambiguity.

I don't gamble and I don't play the lottery. I think doing so would be taking undue risk because I have absolutely no control of the outcome.

On the other hand, doing startup is not risk to me because I believe I can control the outcome. It is just that the outcome is somewhat ambiguous which I know how to mitigate.

I suppose if I take a step back, this is not unlike the difference between an amateur gambler and a professional gambler. If I know how to count cards, I won't think that I am taking risk neither.

\--Denny--

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somehow, it seems like making money and making meaning are two sides of a Mobius strip. They are really the same thing, although they appear to be different. Fooling oneself into thinking they really are separate things is harmful to the wealth of an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER4> I don't know, what about criminals? They make money, too, but do they make meaning?

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends entirely on the criminal ... ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Naturally, you will pardon my wariness of clicking a link to "lovemytool.com".

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. I hope all is forgiven.

\--Denny--

<comment><USER5> After reading the article, all is indeed forgiven. Though you might want to consider rebranding to something less porny. ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a tough call. The primary site, LoveMyTool, is an on-line marketing site for network monitoring TOOLs so at least there is some excuses for it.

It is a difficult name to forget.

\--Denny--</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Retro-Computing Society of Rhode Island - <AUTHOR> http://rcsri.org/

<comment><USER2> It's really cool to see that Cray J90 with the SparcStation 5 control workstation and software.

I do a fair bit of retro computing, and assembling a fully operation platform like that can take years of sleuthing.

Often disk drives are destroyed, which is somewhat understandable. But the media kits are often binned before e-waste companies come to pick up the hardware. So you're left with really interesting hardware and a hunt to make it usable.

And the gray zone where people that do have it don't necessarily want to share the bits because it's still copyrighted including the companies or current rights holders that otherwise don't care.

Assuming you have base OS, it's then very hard to find COTS applications that showcase the platform. SGI IRIX is one exception because there's a somewhat large hobbyist following.

</comment><comment><USER3> Website not responding at present (for me). Google cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eck8H7O...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eck8H7OF1jkJ:www.rcsri.org/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER4> Good find. There's some legit vintage hardware there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't tell if the webpage being down is the joke or if we killed site. Which is too bad because I would be very down with some retro computing!

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't be surprised if the bump of traffic killed it. IIRC they self host the site, and their budget is pretty thin.

For years they hosted the Ocean State Free Net (Hi from as802!) on site on an old Sun workstation. I need to visit again, last I visited they were servicing a real Teletype (complete with bell!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Founded in 1994. How am I just now hearing about this? I'll have to head down to the open house next month.</comment>


Ask HN: Where Do You "Blog"? - <AUTHOR> Most free-as-in-beer publishing platforms are either focused on little to no text (tumblr, twitter, fabook, instagram) or won't work without javascript (blogger)<p>is there still a convenient place for long form text for the occasional long-lived post? <comment><USER2> You could try github pages + markdown(they suggest Jekyll, but I'm sure there's a number of options).

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Blogger but I don't create my content on Blogger. This is probably a dumb workflow, but I write in Markdown, and use pandoc to convert to HTML, then paste the generated HTML into Blogger posts. The idea is that I can also use the same Markdown source to create a PDF or turn it into something like an OpenOffice document that I can format better for print. I haven't come up with a good way to easily generate a book manuscript I'm really satisfied with, though. Various difficulties especially managing indexing and tables of contents and pagination are making this hard. Wish I had a better answer.

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe have a look at write.as.

[https://write.as/](https://write.as/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I use Medium. Their posts are viewable without JS but you do have to have it on to submit.

You can also use Gatsby + Netlify.

[https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter- blog](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-blog)</comment>


WordPress.com Goes Down, Takes Millions of Blogs With It - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/06/10/wordpress-com-goes-down-takes-thousands-of-blogs-with-it/ <comment><USER2> We think central hubs are great -- till they fail. We are always shocked when they fail, but shouldn't be. We expect perfection from a single entity. We can't.

Maybe it's time to change our focus.

<comment><USER3> It's an interesting risk trade off. The central hub is complex but well resourced so able to solve problems quicky (hopefully), self hosting is perhaps a simpler overall solution as it is smaller scale (so less chance of a failure?) but you probably don't have the same man power to deal with a crisis.

Which is more likely to suffer an outage? Which is more likely to suffer a long outage? Which is more likely to suffer a fatal outage?

<comment><USER4> Totally agree. It's incredibly easy to criticize a central hub for any downtime whatsoever because the impact is so large and visible.

But your criticism is completely baseless if the average downtime on a central hub is less than the average of a self-hosted solution.

<comment><USER5> When your self-hosted blog goes down, it's usually your own fault. I guess that's probably more acceptable to hackers than when it's somebody else's fault, and all you can do is sit and stare at generically worded status updates on Twitter.

<comment><USER6> True, but to your users, it doesn't matter whose fault it is. What matters is how quickly it gets solved. And I'm only guessing, but these things probably get solved quicker with central hubs.

Frustrating, but that's the way it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if the continuous development/deployment model that they use is somehow responsible.

<comment><USER8> "The cause of the outage was a very unfortunate code change that overwrote some key options in the options table for a number of blogs." TC

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/10/wordpress-gives-us-the- vip-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/10/wordpress-gives-us-the-vip- treatment-goes-down-on-us-again/#IDComment79548453)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wordpress is one of the largest sites on the web now - I can't believe they have a single point of failure

<comment><USER10> If it was server storage related, then we don't mind helping them out =)

<comment><USER11> Ironically, I am trying to go to your site to see what you do and am getting the following error:

      Error

      Request-URI Too Large

      The requested URL /... is too large to process.

<comment> mike-cardwell And when I try to view <http://moolave.tk/> in Firefox I just get a message saying:

This content cannot be displayed in a frame. To protect your security, the publisher of this content does not allow it to be displayed in a frame.

<comment><USER12> It works for me but seems to be a weird structure of a regular site hooking in a google sites frame which bootstraps a wix flash page which frames the actual site content.

<comment><USER10> Yes, we designed the website from the Wix Flash platform and published it on Google Sites. We still have to make some changes as the right-hand side is taking some space on high-resolution screens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yet another great reason to self host

<comment><USER14> ...if you have better uptime than wordpress.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So kind of a long-tail problem, then.</comment>


Growing X20 without spending an extra penny on hosting - <AUTHOR> http://www.geektime.com/2014/03/10/growing-x20-without-spending-an-extra-penny-on-hosting/

<comment><USER2> An interesting approach!</comment>


Domain price comparison - <AUTHOR> https://www.domcomp.com

<comment><USER2> I saw this a while ago - definitely very useful. They now also have a /reviews section but it doesn't have many reviews yet.</comment>


Option to bring back Chrome's Old New Tab page has been removed - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=335251#c18

<comment><AUTHOR> Peter Kasting's ([https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting](https://plus.google.com/+PeterKasting)) comments:

Consider that, when we make a change and then test it extensively, we have a lot of data at our disposal to tell us whether it's a positive change in the aggregate. If you're going to claim that someone is "trying to justify their role by breaking things which weren't broken", you had better have similarly good data, from hundreds of millions of users, that shows that, indeed, we made things worse overall; and you had also better be privy to the actual design conversations that happened so you know when people are acting in bad faith. I don't believe either of those things is true.

When you claim that we "blatantly disregard" the user experience, or "can't hack constructive criticism", what you're really saying is "the team didn't do what I want on this issue". But equating "I didn't get what I want" to us being malicious and incompetent does not give you the moral high ground; it just makes you sound shrill and makes your opinion less likely to be thoughtfully considered, except by people who are already inclined to agree.

We _have_, in fact, considered the various issues people have raised with the new NTP, and suggestions have been kicked around as to how to address those issues, so you may see changes in the future. Completely reverting the NTP, however, is not one of those suggestions, because the new NTP is massively improved on all kinds of important user satisfaction metrics. Reverting it, in our opinion, would harm the overall UX for a large fraction of our userbase, and we have a moral duty to consider their well-being, _not just the opinions of the few who complain_.

Frankly, in the end, we can't make everyone happy with Chrome. Inevitably, everything we do is going to feel like a net loss to some group of people. Our goal is to not make that group larger than we have to, but it's never going to be empty. If you're not one of those well-served by Chrome's design decisions, you may be better served by another browser, and if so, by all means, use it. The goal in the end is for everyone to have good choices among many good browsers.

And regarding locking threads: at some point, we're not going to continue arguing endlessly. There is nothing to be gained by it; if our actions for the last six years as stewards of Chrome's user interface have not convinced you that we have our users' best interests paramount, then a few more paragraphs on some discussion thread aren't either. So yes, we can and will lock bugs and feedback threads, so we can stop spending time Arguing On The Internet (see relevant memes) and go back to work trying to fix bugs and make Chrome better.

I'm sorry that nothing I say above is going to make you any happier. I would prefer to make you happy rather than not. But I'm not going to do it by making Chrome worse overall.

Locking.</comment>


Python __dunder__ Functions [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.neckbeardrepublic.com/screencasts/__dunder__-functions <comment><USER2> So apparently "dunder" isn't a new thing, just an alternative name for the well-known magic methods ("double-underscore methods"), which as far as I can tell never took off... (never heard the term before this video, and googling it, all I can find is references to the phrase being suggested on the python mailing list, but not used in the wild)

<comment><USER3> I have actually heard "dunder" used in conversation multiple times at Python meetups. I think it's more useful in verbal conversation.

I usually hear it used to replace the phrase "double underscore". For example: "a dunder call method can be used to make an object callable".

<comment><USER4> Can confirm "dunder" used frequently at PyCon. Personally I prefer "under under".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "dunder" has infested JavaScript, too - I've heard spec committee people refer to "__proto__" as "dunder proto".

Good work, Python!

</comment><comment><USER6> A nifty resource for those who are exploring Python's magic methods: <http://www.rafekettler.com/magicmethods.html>

</comment><comment><USER7> A comment on the presentation:

I have three monitors right now, my build-in MBP one and two others hooked up to it. I would like to watch this video in full screen on the MBP display, while doing other stuff in the other two.

Clicking on "Full Screen" activates OSX's shitty built-in "full screen" mode, which moves the video full screen to the center monitor, and hides away every other window on my desktop.

This is awful.

<comment><USER8> Not sure where the bug(or feature) is from your description. It could be your browser, the sublime video player, or something OS specific. If it really bothers you right now, you can just look at the page source and download the mp4 file directly, to play in perhaps another tool.

Your browser probably has some native plugin to play the video, so you can try watching the mp4 directly in that, which might identify if the full screen issue is the browser or the sublime video player part.

FWIW, it works sensibly on windows. It seems strange that Macs have such a problem with multiple monitors. My colleagues are always wasting 10-15min of every meeting trying to figure out how to attach the projector, or use the screen sharing tools(adobe connect) to share the right monitor.

<comment><USER9> It's OSX. From Lion onwards apple added a fullscreen API in the core OS, it's garbage (especially when using multiple monitors) and yet many softs which had previously implemented their own correctly-working fullscreen mode switched to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> dunder is a wonderful way to pronounce "double underscore" methods. It saves a lot of time and syllables.

<comment><USER11> Plus it's great set up for the use of the words "head", "-Mifflin" or as a tribute to the long lost mall staple of the 70s, Mr. Dunderbach.

Wait, what are we talking about again?

Python never fails to amaze me. Everything in the language is a thing that you can redefine. The more I learn about it, the more it reminds me of Lisp, which I had the pleasure (and trauma) of first using more than 25 years ago. Once I wrapped my head around the basics of Lisp, I realized it's a mind-altering experience. I'm long overdue to return to learning more about functional programming.

<comment><USER8> > Everything in the language is a thing that you can redefine.

Pretty much goes for any dynamic language, perl/ruby/javascript/etc...

<comment><USER9> Not really, javascript provides very little core behavioral hooks for instance: no creation hook (new/__new__, yeah you can return your own instance in the constructor but it'll still build an instance regardless), no general attribute-access until proxies (method_missing/__getattr__), no operators override (save through toString/valueOf hacks and that won't work for []), no conversion hooks (again, aside from toString/valueOf), etc...

Compare and contrast: [http://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#special- me...](http://docs.python.org/3/reference/datamodel.html#special-method-names)

Ruby provides roughly the same level of hooking (not sure it allows overriding instance or subclass checks, but it allow overriding things Python does not as well), but JS most definitely does not.

<comment><USER12> All of these things are coming as part of the next version of JavaScript, ES6. Proxy is available in Firefox and Chrome behind a flag. Function.prototype.@@create/@@hasInstance is in the ES6 spec.

<comment><USER9> And thus these things don't "go" for javascript. They might do so in 5 years, informed by the rest. But now, nope.

<comment><USER11> On the plus side, I checked: Mr. Dunderbak (note spelling) is still around. Now I'm all hungry.

Also I definitely need to learn more about Python. It's always deeper than I realize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Learning that these methods can be pronounced "dunder [foo]" flips a bit in my head from "Python, though a clean and predictable language, sure has a few ugly conventions" to "Python conventions have a bit of quirky personality, I like that".

<comment><USER6> I used to think they were ugly too, until I wrote a Python library which made heavy use of overloaded operators. I find that Python's magic methods are a surprisingly elegant way to implement class-specific operators and comparators, at least compared with other languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Direct video link, to avoid the unnecessary Flash wrapper around it: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/neckbeardrepublic/videos/__dunder__...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/neckbeardrepublic/videos/__dunder__.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER15> I always pronounce __foo__ as "magic foo."

</comment><comment><USER16> good one</comment>


Ask HN: What product most improved your quality of life? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A good bed. There is no bed like my own. I have a good night's rest so I can fully take the next day again.

I was doubting to write the next one. Since it's obviously not a "product", but want to mention anyway.

My wife. She really completed me in such a way that it significantly improved my quality of life. She holds the mirror in front of me at the right times and works in an entirely different field, making her a great sparring partner.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to pick just one.

* Laser eye surgery in 2009 - I know it isn't really a "product", but it is one of the best purchasing decisions I've made.

* Kindle - it is so much more convenient than reading or collecting physical books, and with the e-ink screen doesn't detract from that "book feel" for me

* Tretinoin - this might be a weird one, but as someone who is very into skincare this single product makes me feel confident that I am effectively taking care of my skin for the long term. I don't have to worry about if I'm "doing it right", or bother with gimmicky expensive "texture-enhancing" or "anti-ageing" or whatever-the-next-buzzword-is products. Tretinoin has a very large body of research behind it. We know it works. A single tube of tretinoin (coupled with sunscreen!) saves me a lot of wondering and money. This is not to say I use nothing else at all, it's more like this one product and the knowledge base we have on it keeps me from spending money on otherwise expensive skincare that I don't need, which is _marketed_ to do the same thing as tretinoin but isn't actually shown to work like tretinoin is.

<comment><USER4> How old were you when you did LASIK - and what did it fix? (I am in early stages of flirting with the idea - had 2020 vision till about 3 years ago. I am 47 now.)

<comment><USER3> I was 21 at the time; I hear that this is a bit young to get that kind of procedure as my eyes may still change rapidly, but I went to a reputable doctor who ran various tests before concluding that I was a candidate, and luckily my eyesight is still going strong almost 11 years later.

I can't remember exactly what my deficiencies were at the time to be honest, other than I could not see well far away. I was told I needed glasses but never bothered wearing them or paying attention to my sight other than knowing it sucked. When doing an eye test for my driver's permit I was one line away from not being able to legally drive without glasses, if that gives you any idea.

Now there are apparently other options than LASIK which might work better for some. For example, a few years ago a coworker of mine got a procedure that he described as them basically inserting a lens into his eye instead of resurfacing part of the eye itself. Apparently it means if his eyesight changes sufficiently over the years he can just go back and get a new lens inserted!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice glasses. There are a lot of bad ones out there that I've been wearing for over 10 years.

The bad ones DoS my brain with pointless information, greatly harmed my focus and ability to think, as well as gaming abilities. It's also made driving, especially in heavy rain, difficult and hazardous.

The good one made life seem really high resolution. It reduces eye strain a lot, which is wonderful when you work with computers a lot and live in a sunny area.

</comment><comment><USER6> Peak Design messenger - solved all things bags in my life. Proud of having it on me all the time, beautiful and functional.

Sennheiser PXC-550 - One of the best wireless headphones out there. I can keep them on 8 hours a day without any stress.

Keychron K2, just a well-thought wireless/wired mechianical keyboard. Less fatigue and more confort, I can type 4x more text now.

I've been using these every single day for years now.

</comment><comment><USER7> MacBook - Spent years developing software on windows/xterms, my company finally approved Mac for work.

Safari Online - Getting learning material has never been so easy. Actually learning all of them is different :)

AWS - I can get hardware resource without lengthy PO and approval.

Wireless Headphone - Apple Airpod.

A fully stocked and well equiped kitchen in the apartment

</comment><comment><USER8> * My exercise bike - I have no reason not to get in some physical activity (rain, time, etc.).

* My desk whiteboard - It helps so much when confirming/working out a solution.

* My wireless mouse and keyboard - They fit my hands and I can put them away when the whiteboard is what I need.

</comment><comment><USER9> A membership in the car sharing company Car2Go. It was amazing being able to be my own taxi driver and then drop off the car. Too bad it'll be leaving my home area soon.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wireless headphones. Bar none. The fact I can walk around my apartment and listen to a {book,podcast,song}, without worrying about cables or carrying my phone, has been amazing.</comment>


Using Twitter to Send Alerts When Your Site Goes Down - <AUTHOR> http://etherpad.com/ep/blog/posts/using-twitter-to-send-alerts-when-your-site-goes-down

<comment><USER2> We do this with Chatterous.com, and it works perfectly. We set up a group, added our monitoring email as a member and have it email the group when something goes wrong. We get alerts on our phone, IM, or email. The best part is that one of us also can respond (via phone or IM) to let the others know someone is taking action on the alert.

</comment><comment> old-gregg I send emails.

a) Way more reliable.

b) Also land on my phone [with vibration/sound alert]

c) I can put a lot more details in them since there is no 140 chars limit

d) Much easier to do: one line of code - old and simple tech from the 80s (sendmail) beats ugly kids of tomorrow (Twitter) any day of the week!

Mr. Schmidt was right. :-P

<comment><USER3> We send emails too, but it's also nice to get a TXT on your phone for really urgent information such as a problem with the server.

<comment><USER4> Why not just email to email@example.com and get it as an sms too?

<comment><USER5> The author addressed this in the article.

<comment><USER4> But then he chooses the second most unreliable route?

I think this approach is neat and novel, but ultimately I don't believe they've solved their problems.

YAPS/SMSClient with a good gateway SMS provider, if the SMS is that critical. I don't understand why email only is a failure, assuming they have push email to their phone (and if you don't, well why not?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We do this for both <http://www.dynamicalsoftware.com/cogenuity> (<http://twitter.com/cogenuity>) and <http://www.code-roller.com> (<http://twitter.com/code_roller>)

</comment><comment><USER7> What do you do when Twitter is down?

Why not use pingdom for monitoring like Twitter does.

[http://www.pingdom.com/reports/wx4vra365911/check_overview/?...](http://www.pingdom.com/reports/wx4vra365911/check_overview/?name=Twitter.com)

We use pingdom at 3b and love it.

<comment><USER8> gah, what is with the 800's ms average response time?

is it safe to say that's pingdom's connection?

<comment><USER7> They have monitoring locations around the world, but I've been getting unusually high pings from their Berkeley location.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Leaving the Twitter feed public could actually be a nice way to make site status and maintenance transparent with your users.

</comment><comment><USER10> With the amount of time Twitter is down would make this an interesting test.

<comment><USER5> How much are they down these days? I thought they had gotten past the massive reliability issues they used to have.

<comment><USER11> They've been on and off for me all day today.

<comment><USER12> That's not Twitter. That's you. I haven't seen Twitter down in months.

<comment><USER11> I don't have time to do a screen grab of the fail whale for you. Trust me, I'm not making this up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> imho, twitter (and others like it) will morph into a public messaging protocol. as more and more people use it the signal will get drowned by the noise. eventually the only worthwhile way of using twitter will be via enhanced filtering rules for meaningful information from people you know and follow.

twitter is really like a public pastebin with great api support which will allow you to command and control computers remotely. soon the posted messages will be encrypted nuggets taking the Public out of public.

<comment><USER14> If the signal gets drowned out by the noise, that's your fault as a user. You either follow too many people or follow the wrong people. Twitter essentially acts as a whitelist-based messaging platform.

Note the word "whitelist"

<comment><USER13> as programmers, we always know it is "the users fault." but as users, we expect a service to have value and "just work." i do specifically mention getting meaningful information from following users you know.

but how do you find those users? enhanced filtering keyed on multiple vectors will become the only useful mechanism for consuming information from not only those you dont follow but also from those you do.

as it stands i tweet on both professional and personal topics. and so do those that i follow. now if i know these people personally than i may be interested in their personal tweets. but if i do not, than i dont want non-relevant tweets cloggin up my feed.

enhanced clients with better, granular consumption controls are the only way forward.

<comment><USER14> You don't think that users are capable of deciding who is worth following and who isn't, but you expect them to employ "enhanced filters"?

There will always be people who get a kick out of following/friending celebrities, and those who will use twitter for more personal communication or other uses. It doesn't make either behavior right or wrong or more rewarding or less rewarding. But the people who claim that twitter sucks because the interaction isn't personal (or something along those lines) are doing it wrong. They want something specific out of a service but have (possibly unknowingly) set it up to do the complete opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My site, with my 8 dollar a month shared hosting plan, is down FAR less than Twitter.

<comment><USER16> Twitter hasn't had any serious downtime for months.

<comment> old-gregg Actually it is very simple: adding Twitter to the mix adds one more "moving part". Shooting a simple email and then multiplexing it (via aliasing, for instance) to X recipients is easier and more reliable. Create an address like email@example.com and forward to X other destinations from there (including Twitter if you want), and send your notifications to that address using standard 20+ year old protocols and tools, instead of some 3rd party proprietary stuff which was _"released often, released early"_ and hasn't crashed "in months"

<comment><USER16> It's slightly more nuanced than you're making it sound. For one thing, Twitter may very well be more reliable than your email system (YMMV). For another, email doesn't generally beep loudly and alert you.

The idea that an additional part automatically weakens a system is reductive. It doesn't necessarily weaken it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You could probably pair this advice with <http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/> in your is-it-down script, so that you really get a good idea about how widespread your outage is. Just a thought.</comment>


Portland needs developers (and few other folks) - <AUTHOR> http://siliconflorist.com/2011/04/17/sunday-job-search-25-portland-gigs-dream-job/ <comment><USER2> Physical location is outdated.</comment>


Ask HN: Best site to sell a website? - <AUTHOR>

I have a small side project that is a consumer web app with an engaged mailing list. I do not have the time to build it up into a full size company and am looking to sell it.
What are the best online markets for selling such a web property?
The site in question is http://www.makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com <comment><USER2> I would recommend <http://www.flippa.com> \- many high value financial sales

</comment><comment><USER3> Use Twitter - Tweet out your intention to sell it.</comment>


Meet the woman who put 50M stolen articles online (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/meet-the-woman-who-put-50-million-stolen-articles-online-so-you-can-read-them-for-free-a6964176.html <comment><USER3> Tons of discussion about Sci-Hub from about the time this article was published last year: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sci- hub%20points%3E10&sort=byD...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=sci- hub%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER4> _Researchers sign over the copyright and provide their work, often taxpayer funded, free to publishers who then get other researchers to review the papers — also free. The publishers then sell journal subscriptions — some titles cost more than $5,000 a year — back to universities and the federal government. And if someone wants an article, that costs about $35, so that person is paying for the research and to read the results._

That's a racket.

<comment><USER5> Nah, it just means you are in the wrong business. /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recognize this is about 15 years too late but stolen is the wrong word. The vernacular usage of stolen has an inherent bias that some entity is being deprived which isn't necessarily the case.

<comment><USER7> > _The vernacular usage of stolen has an inherent bias that some entity is > being deprived_

The concepts of "stealing" an idea, _i.e._ taking credit for someone else's, and "stealing" someone's spotlight occur in standard vernacular [1]. These don't concern depriving someone of something they have, but depriving them of something they _could_ have had. The logic behind modern copyright is that distribution someone else's content deprives them of _potential_ sales, royalties, _et cetera_.

There is reasonable debate around whether science, particularly taxpayer- funded science, should be copyrighted. But arguing you can't "steal" the intangible runs counter to our culture. A more productive line of argument lies in attacking what can be copyrighted and for how long.

[1] [https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=steal_INF+idea...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=steal_INF+idea%2Csteal_INF+_DET_+spotlight&year_start=1950&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cstolen%20idea%3B%2Cc0%3B.t3%3B%2Csteal_INF%20_DET_%20spotlight%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bsteal%20_DET_%20spotlight%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bstole%20_DET_%20spotlight%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bstealing%20_DET_%20spotlight%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bstolen%20_DET_%20spotlight%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bsteals%20_DET_%20spotlight%3B%2Cc0)

<comment><USER8> > counter to our culture

Whose culture?

The culture that surrounds me seems organized almost chiefly, and at least largely, around radical freedom of information.

<comment><USER9> If that's how you're defining the scope of your culture, then why would you claim to know what the word steal means for those not in your "culture"?

<comment><USER8> > why would you claim to know what the word steal means for those not in your > "culture"?

I... didn't do that. I don't think? Did I?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Gratuitous misquoting by the Independent here: "But she also acknowledges that some passwords were obtained using the kind of phishing methods that hackers use to dupe people out of financial information." based on the quote "It may be well possible that phished passwords ended up being used at Sci-Hub. I did not send any phishing emails to anyone myself." I don't understand how an editor at a major publication allows claims/spin like this with no concrete evidence unless they are explicitly pushing an agenda (I agree that phishing is at least probable in this case; it also may be an excuse to protect those in the password database if it's ever leaked). Wholly fact-based media seems impossible to find these days.

<comment><USER11> UK newspapers are dying:

[http://imgur.com/NJ4F8Tt.jpg](http://imgur.com/NJ4F8Tt.jpg)

I suspect if you cut out the number the Independent hand out for free via hotels it would be even worse. I think now they don't even have a physical edition?

These guys must pay next to nothing and demand articles that get "eyeballs", produced in little time.

Plus all are captive to their main advertisers: cars, banks, realtors.

Why not just read blogs?

<comment><USER12> That's very interesting. Seems like the FT is the only one to buck the trend - I wonder what they're doing differently. The Guardian also seems to be stemming the rot.

Is this a case of two globally oriented forward looking publications that are embracing new distribution mediums?

I've never read the other ones really - maybe this in itself gives a hint, though I am just a sample population of '1'.

<comment><USER12> I just noticed The Times in there as well. Okay I'm guessing from these 3 data points that it might be because they're actually charging for content, but in exchange actually providing content that is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Copying is not Stealing.

Please, donate. The best library i've ever used - free, accessible and easy to use - just what library should look like in 2017.

</comment><comment><USER14> "The site can be clunky to use, often sending users to Web pages in foreign languages."

That has not been my experience. In fact, I'm amazed at how when I paste a paper title into sci-hub, I get immediately redirected to the paper's PDF. I doubt such a service could be provided by Google Scholar or by the commercial publishers even if it were not for the pay walls.

<comment><USER15> That rather depends on the papers you are looking for. If someone else has searched for the same paper before, you get the cached results back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Upvoting because I'm interested in the discussion of the ethics surrounding 'leaking' scientific papers out into the Web, not so much in this particular case itself but as a general sort of act.

HN, what is your opinion on all this?

<comment><USER17> All scientific research should be freely available to the public, without reservation or condition.

I have my reservations about leaking political or classified information in some cases, because as Wikileaks has demonstrated, leaks can be used to push a political agenda, rather than serve the cause of unbiased truth.

But scientific knowledge benefits the progress of humanity as a whole - <USER2> truth doesn't have a political agenda, although it certainly can discredit political axioms. Trying to keep it contained, controlled or limit its access to a select few should be considered a crime against humanity.

<comment><USER18> >All scientific research should be freely available to the public, without reservation or condition.

Even scientific research on how to build a functional nuclear bomb?

<comment><USER17> Yes, I think so. That research is already public or available on the black market anyway, and the US built the first nuclear bomb ~70 years ago, so it's kind of a moot point.

But what would the alternative be? That only the governments which discover how to build a nuclear bomb understand how it works and what its effects are, and get to threaten the rest of the world with impunity?

I'm not certain that would be better than the world where everyone at least understands the underlying science, even if not everyone can build one.

<comment><USER9> There's a big difference between the nuclear bombs countries with nascent nuclear programs (like North Korea) can build, and those the US can build. So unless you're talking about _just_ enough knowledge to build the simplest of nuclear weapons, it's far from moot.

Everyone _does_ understand the underlying science (or can find it pretty quickly on the internet), but very few understand the engineering specifics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's a very very bad idea if you are going to do this sort of thing to attract any media attention or to ever talk to them about anything, much less let them take a picture of you.

<comment><USER20> Why?

<comment><USER21> Check out what happened to the last guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

<comment><USER20> Well, it makes it pretty darn obvious now that Aaron's prosecution was related to his political activities and aspirations, no? I know Aaron didn't like this cynical interpretation of the judicial system, but it seems difficult to argue against it now...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


An iterative look at logo / icon design - <AUTHOR> http://blog.yobongo.com/post/3294786878/designing-the-yobongo-icon <comment><USER2> This is a beautiful icon, but I'm going to risk saying something unpopular here. This is less a design exercise than it is an application of current design trends. Linen textures, subtle gradients, noisy gradients, glowing text—even the controversial iTunes 10 glow—are all everywhere. And while they look cool, they do nothing to distinguish your brand from anyone else following the same trends.

<comment><USER3> Brushed Metal and Glow is the new Individualized Helvetica Nameplate on Stark White Paper (Just Like Everyone Else). It's hopelessly derivative and is rapidly having its meaning and impact sucked dry. It's also a pretty effective signal for (1) I hired a designer because (2) this is a high quality Mac/iOS application.

I don't really have a problem with it and it kicks the pants off an icon that didn't get that kind of workup in terms of visceral Polish, but as others have noted, it pretty much tells no story of the app at all. I'm not even interested enough to click on their header and learn.

That's fine though. Commodity design doesn't have to have an impact, and I prefer a world where commodity design is valuable and practiced over one where people just don't care.

<comment><USER4> I would prefer a world where people take risks attempting to forge their iconography with meaning at the expense of stylistic visual polish, to one where hollow aesthetics are seen as an alternative to ugliness.

<comment><USER3> As would I, but the harsh reality seems to be that the demand is not direct enough to support that kind of effort. That intangible "passion" is not extrinsically motivated, and mass audience isn't willing to forgo convenience in the search of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Terrible logo for getting actual downloads- implies nothing about what the app does.

With App Store marketing you have to describe your app with just the title and logo. By punting on logo you're losing 50% of your descriptive levers for getting rank traffic.

<comment><USER6> Some context to back the authoritativeness of Colin's statement:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=745858>

[http://spreadsong.com/icon_driven_development_on_the_app_sto...](http://spreadsong.com/icon_driven_development_on_the_app_store_how_we_make_350day_without_marketing)

<comment><USER7> After reading that blog post I checked out the company and saw... another bookshelf icon?

<http://spreadsong.com/>

Tried to find more info, but the Spreadsong blog seems to be MIA without a direct link to a specific entry.

<comment><USER5> We changed it six months ago- once we were able to afford the design talent to make a good go of it.

<http://cl.ly/3O3H300K3C3p423G2i2Z>

It's another bookshelf icon, but the colors and style make it stand out in the app store listings.

Key is to stand out relative to competition, in the common ways users find your app.

Downloads and sales have more than doubled since the change, though we also redesigned the app interface itself in the same update.

<comment><USER8> I might be biased as one of the cofounders, but I find that the Yobongo icon stands out pretty well relative to the myriad of blue-ish icons.

<http://i.imgur.com/VtYUJ.png>

The strong border sets the icon apart, and in fact I notice that you have a similar border in your icon!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The app is about chatting with people _near_ you. First of all, that's been done before...many times, and it has not worked yet. Secondly, if they are spending so much time & money on just an icon, and ending up with an icon that does not work well in the app store, then they clearly have no clue what they are doing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one to think that icons that prominently feature a letter to represent the app aren't very... iconic? Is this from the school of thought that gave rise to Adobe's adoption of their new "icons"?

Thankfully this pattern seems to be more rule than exception. Very few of the icons in my Dock have letters (or glyphs) in them at all. Notably, Skype uses a big S in some circle-y kinda thing, X11 has the "X" and Angband uses some vaguely Asian-looking thing.

<comment><USER4> Checklist for a powerful brand:

1) An icon where the name of the object depicted in the icon is the name of the company or product. 2) A company/product name that's also a common noun, but not so common that search results for the noun overpower search results for the company/product. Depends on the prominence of the product/company, of course. 3) A domain name that is the exact company/product name.

Eg: Apple.

Good luck finding something that matches these requirements!

I'm half-joking, of course. In all seriousness, I 100% agree with you. Icons should be graphic, not textual. They should be expressive, not descriptive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is all style with no substance.

Looking at the icon, I have no clue what it's for.

<comment><USER4> Style with no substance: isn't that what's "hot" right now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> A Y in a box. I wonder if they considered doing it in orange?

</comment><comment><USER13> It would have helped to see the mobile icon in context (ie, on an iPhone homepage or dock/shelf)... hard to see the faults with the brightness without seeing the "pudding".

</comment><comment><USER14> I find it interesting that so many top-tier social offerings leverage various shades of blue (facebook, twitter, yammer, linkedin). There are multiple psychology discussions (color theory, herd mentality, etc.) in there somewhere.

To be honest, at first glance I was reminded of Yammer's iPhone icon. But I think this treatment stands on its own.

Very much like Yobongo publicly discussing their brand's visual evolution.

<comment><USER4> This is a great infographic for an overview of the prominent colors of the web: [http://static.colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/imag...](http://static.colourlovers.com.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/images/top- web-brand-colors.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Visual balance.. The Y is too far left. You could have started with the simple and effective version you ended up with, not the "clever-negative-space" one. Abstraction provides better results when you have something to take away from. See if you can get an interesting result going the other way (removing instead of adding) from your current final design.

</comment><comment><USER16> Paul Rand designed the famous NeXT logo for Steve Jobs — do you think Steve made one change to it? No. <http://www.paul-rand.com>

<comment><USER17> I read that Paul Rand said (something to the effect of) a great logo could be drawn in sand with your finger and still be recognizable.

<comment><USER16> All of his logos had that! In fact I think a real good test of a brand is if you can blur the logo and still recognize it. Of course part of that is the ability to saturate the mass media with your brand — and Rand was part of that golden age.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Congrats to having the guts to drop the reflections! They may seem sexy on the first sight, but make the icons unsuitable for long term usage.

</comment><comment><USER19> Continuous iteration towards continuous improvement! That final logo design is very good and clean.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice logo design. :)

Neeraj Agarwal</comment>